Angel's Legacy
by Pardus Ardens
Summary: For more than thirteen years, the Scrapyard and its environs were witness to the exploits of perhaps the greatest warrior Earth has seen. Two decades later, Alita's legendary adventure leads to a new one. Last Update: 2.10.2005
1. The Simple Life : Vision 1 : Home

        _Plip . . . plip . . .  
AGONY!_  
Existance swayed pendulously between delerium and agony beyond words. The arcane, madness-tossed ocean of schizophrenic subconscious lapped at a shore of jagged, shattered, rocky anguish. Increasingly, the rush of disjointed memories and thoughts submerged the physical sensation which was screaming, screaming, screaming primally for attention.  
With a twitch of the young woman's body, the sea of delirium rolled back briefly. She could hear a distant rush and a half-percieved _plip . . . plip . . . plip_ in the vague darkness, interrupted by—  
_AGONY!_  
Just as quickly, delirium rolled over her again as the echo of her own sudden and pitiful cry faded into the black haze.  
_What happens_, thought Jasmine, as clear thoughts of the present crumbled once more and scattered like grains of sand, reshuffled into meaningless chaos by the engulfing waves—_what happens when the tide comes in?_  
  
Jasmine squinted at the fierce glare of the fiery sunset glimmering across the water. Buildings still stood out in the bay, some towering dozens of stories high; they stood like giant men who had risen to their feet to gaze expectantly westward across the ocean, and remained standing so long that trees took root on them and the sun bleached them a lifeless grey. She was six and a half years old—old enough to know they weren't _really_ giant men waiting for giant ships to appear on the western horizon—but it was more exciting to imagine they were.  
"Jasmine?"  
"Huh?"  
"I said, 'what happens when the tide comes in?'" Jasmine's mother watched the girl as she worked diligently to perfect her sand castle, and smiled to herself in the peaceful manner of a mother relishing the sight of her child at play.  
Jasmine stared out at the water, working through the familiar image of the tide rolling in and smothering the beach almost up to the diminutive cliff; the cliff marked the erosion caused by hundreds of years of the storm tide rolling in from time to time. The usual high tide line was marked in turn by a change in the texture of the beach: beyond the reaches of the daily high tides, the beach was stones and pebbles and mussel shells long since pillaged by birds and dried seaweed clinging to rocks.  
Her sand castle, however, was well within the region of soft, warm sand.  
Jasmine gasped with realization. She had placed her castle too close to the water: it would be lost to the sea by the next morning! At once, she started work on a wall, a stout fortificatied barrier to keep back the ruinous tide.  
The girl's mother knelt by her side, laughing as a mother does at her child's harmless folly. _How is it_, this motherly laughter seems to tenderly chide, _that you worry when even I know with certainty that you face neither harm nor lasting sorrow?_  
"It's okay, Jasmine," she said, wrapping her arms shelteringly about her daughter. "I learned a long time ago that you can't save every castle built in the sand, and nothing lasts forever."  
Jasmine stopped her work, looking at her masterpiece mournfully, silently resisting the inevitable doom which awaited it. "But I don't _want_ to lose it."  
Alita kissed the crown her daughter's head softly, holding her gently but securely. "I know, Jasmine," she answered. "I know. Sometimes you don't really have a choice."  
She paused a moment, watching the sandcastle quietly.  
"But I'll tell you a secret—how you can keep it with you forever."  
Jasmine looked up at her mother, wide-eyed, her voice hushed reverently at the offer of such a profound mystery revealed. "Really? How?"  
Alita smiled warmly and nodded, her own voice falling quiet. "Enjoy it while it lasts, and seal that joy away in your heart, where nothing can take it from you." She took her daughter's sand-encrusted hand and pressed it tenderly over the girl's heart.  
"Everything you love will stay with you forever, right here."  
  
_Plip . . . plip . . . plip . . . plip . . ._  
Swirling delirium rolled away, leaving glistening, mind-wracking bodilly agony. Jasmine felt as though impaled and lit afire by a bolt of lightning, and it was all she could do to cry out like a frightened infant—even breathing seemed to drag the ranging electric fire into her body where it coursed from her heart to the tips of her fingers and toes and then reverberated back up her nerves. Each twitch of her body hurled her from the swirling and smothering sea of dreams up onto the rocky, cuspate shore to be torn anew by blinding pain.  
As the warm, misty ocean washed over her thoughts again, it gently lifted her from her body's suffering, wrapping her once more in disjointed memory. Tingles, chills, and fatigue whirled through her like recklessly swooping sea birds at battle. Her kinesthetic and vestibular senses swam like an image seen through turbulant waters, and the world spun directionlessly away from her.  
  
Jasmine sat up, rubbing her head and promising herself not to cry. It wasn't serious, but it still hurt to land so roughly even on sand, and moreover, it was frustrating. At least she almost never got sand in her eyes, now. She stood and let out a deep breath like she had learned to do from her father, puffing away the wounds to her pride and inhaling strength and courage. She brushed sand from herself and focused, trying to will away the distracting funny bone feeling running back through her head from her sinuses; that was the worst part of all—it wasn't really pain, but somehow more unpleasant and nerve-grating, like fingernails on a chalk board.  
She had been practicing the routine since the end of last year, not long before her ninth birthday. She wanted to be ready by Mother's Day, since it was Alita who taught her all the acrobatics and gymnastics she had picked up; the fighting part she also got from her father, Figure, but she supposed she could do something else for Father's Day. Maybe she'd catch the biggest fish she could. It was either that, or beat up one of the boys in the village, and while her father would surely be proud, she decided the fish was an all-around better idea.  
The fish could wait. Jasmine had to concentrate on what she was doing for Mother's Day, now just two months away. She had the routine down in her head, but she needed to get it all smooth, especially that flip; she had the move down by itself, but it was never so easy to fit it in with others.  
She began moving, pulling into her stance, exhaling slowly and deliberately; her arms slid into position in a patient, gliding motion made all the more serpentine by the hiss of her escaping breath. For a silent, timeless moment, she held her position perfectly still.  
Then she sprang into action.  
Since she could walk on her own, Jasmine had been learning gymnastics, tumbling, and acrobatics from her mother. She learned first to tumble and fall safely, progressed to roundoffs, and continued on to begin mastering full flips only a year ago. She still had to use her hands sometimes, but the more she practiced and worked her legs, the more she could trust herself.  
As she lept forward, the nimble pivot and sharp _snap_ of her high kick were all her mother's style—dash, feign, and strike with precision: the tilt of her body to deliver the kick brought her outside her imaginary attacker's hypothetical strike. At the same time, her confidence in having the strength to challenge someone larger than her, she owed to her father. He insisted that without strength, all the flashy moves in the world were meaningless, and made certain that however lean and wiry, her muscles worked hard enough to outmatch most of the boys of the village.  
With a fraction of a second spent motionless (carefully planned to display her balance), Jasmine swung her leg back through its trajectory, righting herself and pushing free of the ground to let the momentum carry her backward in a graceful flip; her other leg lagged as it swung upward, toes curled back, to catch the chin of a second hypothetical enemy with the ball of her foot. She pivoted as she landed—this time, with her leading foot placed soundly and with her balance intact—spun as her trailing foot touched down, and swept low and fast across the ground with her calf to knock loose the first fictional assailant's legs from under him.  
She continued fluidly, pouncing forward and using the sand where her opponent's stomach would be as the anchor for a round-off, leaving a distinct impression from the pivoting action. She twisted in the air as she sprung off, and with another _snap_ of her loose pant leg, launched a kick squarely into the face of her newly recovered second imaginary attacker. She could almost feel the impact and the give of his nose, and it sent a tingle through her; she didn't like the idea of hurting people, so much as knowing she was _able_ to hurt _bad_ people. That was the kind of power and motivation that made heroes, and she wanted more than anything to let Alita know that her daughter, too, could be a hero.  
  
_Plip . . . plip . . . plip . . ._  
The shifting edge of the sea of delirium washed against the brutally ragged shore, murky with the solute, particulate froth of a thousand splintered thoughts. Protrusions of jagged, flinty, neuralgic pain jutted asymmetric and fanglike from the surface, and agony screamed down Jasmine's nerves like bullet trains racing down their tracks through disaster-torn countrysides. Color flashed and flared kaleidoscopically in the darkness lingering before her right eye, and through whirling fear and pain thrust a potent, metallic scent; another, musky and stale, lay like a musty blanket over everything, but it was wan and mild in the company of the first.  
The colors shifted and blurred as thoughts and perceptions submerged into the hazy shadows of delirium once more: red and blue smeared together into shades of purple, greens ran together with the reds and blended into a murky greyish purple-brown like a deep contusion or necrotic flesh.  
  
Jasmine frowned at her palette and the ugly shade of grey. She had caught herself fidgeting with her paints, swirling together a dab of this with a dab of that. The color it produced was neither flattering nor pleasant. It reminded her of fish guts, which also weren't pleasant.  
Sighing, she sat back against a tree growing from the high rooftop where she had set up easel and canvas, and looked out across the water. The sky was still light, but the sun had set. Her canvas held the surrealistic image of the sun in the midst of setting, half of its golden form lingering above the razor-sharp line of the horizon—below it, only the thousand glittering undulations of the water showed, and above, only sparse clouds aglow in shades of yellow and orange. The rest of the canvas was blank and untouched; there was no blue azure sky harboring the clouds, and there was no grey-green sea off of which the reflected sunlight shined.  
She had planned to put them in, of course. She had tried more abstract and impressionist styles, but they didn't keep her interest. She read books her mother collected—some were about thing like ancient history and art—and wondered why anyone else had ever been interested in anything so far removed from reality that they were all but impossible to identify with.  
Today, she had been experimenting with new approaches; in this case, her experiment was painting the brightest parts, first. She lost interest after she had finished the sun and its reflections, leaving nothing else but the pencil-line horizon. It was an hour later, now. She had spent the whole time staring either at her canvas or at her palette or out into the sky, and fidgeting with her paints.  
She realized, then, that she was tired of painting sunsets over the ocean.  
She still thought it was a tremendously beautiful and moving sight, but in twelve years of life, she had painted more sunsets than she could count—all of them, sunsets over the ocean—and while she had become much, much better at it, she had also become sick of it. She wanted to see and paint something new. The people of Alhambra, the coastal town where she lived with her parents, were just as familiar, and almost as prodigiously reproduced in pigment on canvas.  
_What I need to paint_, Jasmine decided, _is everything I've heard of but never seen. The Western Mountains, Steel City, the Tree of Life—all of those things._  
Each night, as a child, her head swam with all the stories her mother told about the adventures she was in before she settled down in Alhambra. Kaos, an archaeologist and leader of the Steel City community who had been a friend of Alita—Jasmine, herself, was named after Kaos' childhood friend who had died during Alita's adventures—occasionally sent pictures along with books for her mother's collection, and Jasmine had memorized the faces of these epic characters to make her bedtime stories even more vivid. Now, she wanted to see them, and to see the places where all the action had taken place.  
She also wanted to see the one person she had heard the most about, but never seen. Kaos had no pictures to send of Ido, the man who had been like a father to Jasmine's mother until he was killed. The last time Alita had seen him must have been more than twenty years ago, and he had lost his memory of her. Even if he didn't know any of them, Jasmine still wanted to meet the man who was almost her grandfather, and maybe bring home a painting of him.  
  
_Plip . . . plip . . . plip . . ._  
The rushing, whirling, tumbling maelstrom of confusion and vague fear created a sickening kind of emotional vertigo. Jasmine began to feel that the momentary shocks of abject agony were almost a welcome interruption, until they came upon her and she longed again for the numbness of delirium. Darkness, everywhere, except imagined colors dancing along her optic nerves to a deranged and just barely inaudible melody. _Maybe_, she thought, _if I lie here long enough, I'll hear it, too._  
_Is this what death is like?_ she wondered, half-consciously, as reason began to slip away once more; it slipped from her hands in the same slow and inevitable way sand had always slipped from between her fingers underwater, when she was a child playing at the beach. Over the song of madness, she thought she could hear the ocean. In the darkness, the cool murmur of the sea rang in her ears.  
  
The surf rolled, whispered, and hushed. The house, like the rest of the village, was close enough to the water that it could be heard at any time of the day, even through the walls. But it was so much easier to hear it in the middle of the night, when the birds were quiet and the village was asleep; when all the world seemed to be at rest but for the wind and the sea.  
At least, most of the village was asleep.  
Jasmine lay quietly in bed, working up the nerve to follow through with her plan. She had pretended to go to sleep three hours ago. She had most of what she needed packed up already. Her note was written and rewritten over the course of the last three weeks; she had wanted it to be perfect. There was nothing left to do but to make her move.  
She swung quietly out of her bed and quickly rolled up the sleeping bag she used for bedding. From the dark corner of her closet, she retrieved the backpack she had filled with snacks to last her awhile—bread, cheese, and smoked fish—and the tools she'd learned to take with her when she travelled away from home. Quickly, she lashed the backpack and bedroll together and set them by her window. She pulled her note out from where she had hidden it in the backpack and read it over once more:  
  
Dear Mom and Dad,  
Sorry I have to say this in a note, but I know you'd never let  
me go if you knew. I hope you won't still be angry at me when I  
come back. It might be a long time, and I'll really miss home, and  
I'll REALLY miss you both, but I promise I'll always write! I'll try  
and send pictures, too!  
I realized one day that I needed to see all the things you  
always told me about. I guess it sounds crazy, and I guess I can't  
ask you to understand. But I promise I'll be okay, and I promise I'll  
come back home when I'm ready. It's just something I know I have  
to do, I guess. Take care of Alhambra for me!  
Love, Jasmine  
  
Jasmine's room didn't have a window that opened, so she had no choice but to make her way through the house. Fortunately, there was only the ground floor, so she didn't have to worry about the floor making noise. She got dressed as fast as she could, slung her pack over her shoulder, and slipped out of her room, carrying her shoes in her hand; she knew from experimenting that they made more noise than did socks. It didn't take long to get to the front door. She paused briefly in hesitation; if she continued, she realized, she had to follow through completely. She couldn't go out for a week or two and come back, or she'd just wind up grounded, and then she might never get herself to go.  
She watched her hand gripping the knob of the door for a long moment, and she didn't breathe as she slowly and quietly turned it. She slipped outside again, closing the door as silently as she was able, keeping the knob turned until the door was shut to keep the latch from clicking. A glance around revealed nobody outside, just as she had expected. Alhambra was a quiet fishing village, and there wasn't much going on outside after dark, most days.  
Jasmine had been practicing for this all through the last year, since she had realized she needed to get away. As she walked out to the edge of the town and looked back at houses dimly lit by a sliver of moon, she thought about her frequent camping trips instead of her home—if she thought about it too much when she was so close, she might turn back. She had to be brave, she told herself over and over again.  
For a long time, she stood and watched Alhambra slumber.  
Then, finally, she turned and began walking. She had to get some distance, or else she'd be caught in her sleep. There was a pretty long stretch of prairie and light woodland where she could forage before getting to the mountains. The Western Mountains, as they were called on the other side, would be the real tough part, but she had decided long ago to get as ready as she could and then worry about the mountains when she reached them.  
_I promise I'll come back someday, Alhambra!_  
_I'll come back and show you the rest of the world!_


	2. Knight Errant : Vision 2 : Lone Wolves

The Simple Life

Vision 1: Home

Jasmine walked a long time among verdant hills, pacing herself carefully. She had practiced camping in the hills for a year before she left home, and knew how far she could get in a day without taxing herself. She was healthy, but her size and the terrain in places hindered her. As she had planned, she began by traveling east from Alhambra and then following the rivers southeast.

It was about a week of travel before she reached the Salton Bay. The whole time, she slept hidden under whatever cover she could find, several minute's walk away from the river, to avoid getting caught and dragged back to town. Now, as she worked her way southeast along the miles of the lowland bay's eastern shoreline, she began to relax. In Alhambra, people had to supply for themselves day-to-day; they couldn't spend forever hunting for a girl in the wilderness, wandering off in all directions.

During the day, she spent hours walking at a comfortable pace, taking breaks whenever she felt she ought to; in the afternoon, she waded to her waist into the bay's gently sloped beach and fished, and she foraged on the slopes of the hills which framed the Salton Bay. Once, the bay had been a fertile sub-sealevel valley, until the sea swallowed it. Now, it teemed with fish and saltwater plants.

Jasmine reached the mouth of the Great Barrier Mountain River, as it was known in Alhambra, at the end of the second week away from home, and began to follow it north. When she reached the Gila River's junction with the Great Barrier Mountain River, she followed it east, upstream.

The terrain was no longer so green as it had been around the Salton Bay. Now, Jasmine walked through badlands, and foraging was often a challenge; she fished in the river and cooked her catch for supper, which was far more reliable. The badlands were more lonely than the verdant hills near her home had been. Neither had human company, but the fertile lands of her first weeks of travel at least had more life.

Jasmine had begun to sing to herself to keep speaking, and to keep hearing someone speak. It was three months of dead-end rivers, of wandering in the hills and badlands, of hunting for ways to follow the river where it cut deep canyons, before she was in the company of people once more.

The Zuni River's path led Jasmine into a lively flatland region resting in the morning shadows of the Great Barrier Mountains' highest crests; it led her to the home of the Zuni: darker skinned than herself or most of the people of Alhambra, but of the same honest, pleasant character. She stayed ten days to rest from her travels. In return for their hospitality and gifts—including sturdy new shoes to replace the Alhambran ones she had worn down in her travels—she fished, sang, and painted for the Zuni; her sketches, she kept, to show the people of Alhambra on her return to the village. She took the dried venison she was offered, but only because the last thing she wanted was to seem unappreciative; she had never really liked red meat.

When she left the Zuni, she traveled eastward along the rivers. In two weeks, she reached the Grand River, running north and south through the midst of the Great Barrier Mountains. Jasmine knew she was still too far to the south, and continued northward, against the flow of the Grand River. The hills around her were sparse, but the views were beautiful, and the Grand River's gentler tributaries were plentiful.

_Plip . . . plip . . . plip . . ._

Darkness was everywhere. Darkness and cold—not a biting cold, this, but a slow, numbing, insidious cold. When reason lay bare, exposed on jagged shore, the darkness was a yawning, cavernous void; when delirium swept up Jasmine's senses once more, the darkness was a palpable, smothering mass.

No light infringed upon the blackness which was everything: no sun ray, no moonbeam, no distantly reflected glimmer. Only the chill penetrated, and the sound of falling droplets—and, resonating about unseen walls in an unseen chamber, a low whimper pierced the darkness and reached Jasmine.

She stared into the moonless night and heard the sound again: a timid, muffled, faint whimper. It sounded harmless—more than harmless, desperately needy—but she hesitated nearby her campfire's symbolic heat, light, and safety. She knew better than to spring headlong into the dark night in the miserably cold, unlit midnight mountains.

The trip up the Grand River had been uneventful. Jasmine had come northward to a valley of sorts among the many ranges which combined to form the Great Barrier Mountains, and knowing that the seasons were moving on despite her, she turned east and searched for a pass, hoping to reach Steel City quickly and cross the mountains during the summer months.

She lost weeks that way, for traveling among the mountains was much slower than following river valleys had been; it was also easier to get lost, which she did more than once. She never found a good pass across the ridge—only the bitter chill and violent storms of an unusually cold year. Having failed to pass the long north-south range, she intended to return to the mountain valley, where she had heard there was a settlement. She was camping her last night in the mountains before returning, when she heard the sound.

Gathering her courage and casting off the frayed edges of her confidence, Jasmine clutched by its base a dead branch she had planned to use for firewood, and held the needle-bearing end over the fire. When it was burning well, she swung the brand around to illuminate the darkness beyond her campfire's reach.

In the half-shadows of the mountainside brush hunched a small wolf pup, not likely more than six weeks old. It stared at Jasmine, wide-eyed and ears flattened against its head, but it looked far too small and sounded far too desperate to seem dangerous.

Jasmine hesitated, staring for a long moment at the wolf cub.

_Where's its mother?_ she wondered to herself as her brand burned and crackled brightly. _Is it lost? Can baby wolves even get lost? I haven't heard any wolves howling, tonight..._

Brushing away uncertainty, Jasmine glanced back and tossed the branch back onto the fire, stepping over to it once again. She produced dried meat from her pack, tore a piece free, and tossed it to a spot just inside the edge of the firelight.

Then she waited.

For what seemed an eternity, there was only the whisper of the wind and the cub's faint whimpers—until a pair of small, shining eyes came close by the edge of the light and a small, dark-furred head sniffed curiously at the meat. Slowly, uncertainly, the cub slipped closer and nudged the morsel with its muzzle, and again. It took the morsel into its mouth, but just for a moment, letting it drop to the ground again, and whimpered helplessly.

_That was deer_, Jasmine thought as she watched. _I'm pretty sure wolves eat that, don't they? So why doesn't it eat—_

She paused, watching the cub, as a realization formed; during her time with the Zuni, she had heard a great deal about wolves, revered as wise spirits of the wilderness, masterful hunters, and gentle teachers and providers to their young.

_Maybe that's the problem!_

She tore off another small piece, placed it between her teeth, and chewed, tenderizing and softening the dried meat as best she could. She imagined her mother yelling at her for handling something she had been drooling all over, even though it really was not that bad; the taste and texture of dried deer had not grown on her in the last few weeks.

Once the morsel was soft enough, she tossed it to the ground near the wolf cub and watched. Again, timidly, the cub edged up to the bit of meat, sniffed, and inspected. Less reluctantly, now, it took the morsel up in its diminutive jaws and gulped it down hungrily.

Jasmine smiled to herself, slowly, proudly, as she watched the pup and chewed another bit of jerky by way of preparing it. When it was tender, she tossed it to her tiny guest—closer than before, encouraging the cub to come nearer, which it did. She wiped her fingers clean on her pants, since her mother wasn't there to object to that, either.

"I'm Jasmine. And I guess you'll need a name, won't you?"

She contemplated the wolf cub as she chewed and tenderized the tough, dry meat for it. She had heard a lot of old, old, ancient stories read to her by her mother from the books her Uncle Kaos sent.

_Wolves, wolves, wolves..._

As she thought, she dropped another bit of chewed meat on the ground, nearer herself, watching as the little pup inched closer, paused, and sniffed at her dubiously. She offered her hand, and the pup sniffed at that, as well, lapping at the fingers Jasmine had handled the meat with; her other hand reached, slowly and uncertainly, to touch the cub's back.

The cub seemed to hesitate, briefly, and then snapped up the morsel Jasmine had dropped, letting her stroke the down-soft fur of its back. Finished eating, the pup sniffed and nuzzled at her hands experimentally, as though memorizing her scent and texture.

Jasmine laughed softly to herself and gently lifted the pup, cradling it in her arms without much resistance. "You're a girl, too, huh? Well, then I know _just _what to call you."

_Plip . . . plip . . ._

_Skoll!_ thought Jasmine, as she heard the sound again. it was not a helpless whimper, or a plaintive one, but it was frustrated and concerned; it acknowledged helplessness, but didn't complain about it. It was strange in its passive tone, but it was a familiar sound, and this half-alien quality made it at once comforting and deeply haunting.

Now the chill had grown stronger. It rippled across her skin, into the ground, and up through her chest as though transfixed by an icicle. It became a venom that crept into the tips of her fingers and her toes. It pooled in her palms and in the soles of her feet, and it felt like oblivion.

"Nn... Skoll..." She was unsure whether she had spoken aloud to her companion, or thought the words to herself—she was half-conscious and breathing felt wrong.

"It's cold..."

The banshees keening in the fierce blizzard outside were the only response to her halfhearted complaint. Skoll whimpered and buried her muzzle against Jasmine's side; Jasmine finished tending the fire, and pulled over them both the deerskin cover she had earned months earlier from the people of the Alamosa Mountain Valley. Like the Zuni, the people of Alamosa had been overwhelmingly and often even embarrassingly generous.

After a fortnight spent among the people of Alamosa, recovering from their misadventures in the Sangre de Cristo Range, the pair had traveled north; they skirted the northeastern shores of a lake and followed one of its associated rivers, the San Guache Creek, into the mountains. Although there was a river system sound of the Sangre de Cristo, the people of Alamosa warned that the pass there led out directly into a popular camping ground for brigands. Jasmine had decided while struggling about for a pass in the Sangre de Cristo Range that even if it meant continuing on through the winter, keeping to the rivers and streams would be a necessity, and she knew better than to think she was ready to take on serious outlaws.

Despite having left Alamosa at the end of July, the mountains were cold in the unusually chill summer, and the weather only grew crueler as the duo traveled. Although they followed the San Guache Creek, Jasmine's navigation was imperfect, and they overshot the river they had been told to follow. As they traveled, they were kept well fed by Jasmine's familiarity with fishing, and they tussled and played daily. Before the beginning of September, Skoll had already grown rather adept at catching mice for herself, and could always depend on Jasmine to share if her own hunting went poorly.

They found a great many dead-end rivers which dwindled uphill into streams which dwindled into brooks; they were kept fed, but the days rolled on, and their precut paths often snaked about confusingly and wound up leading them back westward rather than to the east. They took to traveling only in the morning and afternoon, when the sun's position made east and west obvious; this tactic slowed their progress still further, and left them walking in the cooler parts of the day. Already, an at best tepid summer had been quickly giving way to autumn, and in the mountains, snow was not a surprising sight—although it did take Jasmine a few snow showers before she adjusted to the sight.

It was awhile after that, now, as they sat in the cave. Skoll sometimes ate better than Jasmine in the cold months, as they traveled through the chill expanse of the Great Barrier Mountains, hunting for an easy eastward path. Most of those paths were safe for caravans and experienced riders, but a lone girl with a wolf cub was another story. Jasmine typically had to limit her fishing to early afternoon as the sun briefly warmed and melted away ice floating along river surfaces; it was often a challenge even to navigate the snow and ice to reach the river bank safely.

Such was the state of things while they were camped out in the cave; in early November, Jasmine had decided it was getting too wintry to travel safely, and so they found a natural, unoccupied shelter. The cave served well to ward off the worst of the winter storms, but Jasmine was still not really prepared for a winter in the mountains, and it never went smoothly. She spoke to Skoll regularly, and sang to her daily; Skoll, in turn—already fiercely protective of her surrogate pack-sister—learned to be helpful, even though she was still growing, and helped bring meat when Jasmine fell sick (even if it was meat Jasmine would never eat under normal conditions).

Late in February, Jasmine and Skoll finally quit the cave. For Jasmine, at least, it had been growing more and more claustrophobic, and she had even begun to long for the travel again—for passing through valleys and over ridges and seeing new streams and new sights. That was why she had left Alhambra, after all; so it galled her to spend so much time in a cave, and she was glad to leave it.

As March began, the pair followed a strong river east by northeast to another, and through Trout Creek Pass, as the days marched onward, warming into a kinder year than the last had been. The pass brought them down into the eastern foothills from where flowed the Platte River, leading them out into the badlands. They had to keep near the river, both for navigation and water, and Jasmine was constantly wary of the outlaws she had heard so much about, months before. After they had traveled in a roughly eastward direction for some time, they came across a caravan returning from the Great Barrier Mountains—no, they were called the Western Mountains, here—and in return for her services as an entertainer and artist, singing and painting for the men of the caravan, Jasmine earned them passage to their first destination:

Farm 21.

_Plip . . . plip . . . plip . . . plip . . ._

A whispering, phantasmal howl rushed over and through Jasmine's body—not a wolf's howl, but just a faint draft, murmuring through her delirium. It was a clammy breeze, as though blowing out of a grave. She felt death lingering in it, circling like a patient buzzard.

Still, Skoll sounded concern but no weakness. Jasmine distantly felt a canine tongue against her cheek, and she the sensation to be mysteriously comforting. Her thoughts grew hazy and drifted and tore, clouded and tenuous, and she felt a soft, warm breath of wind tenderly sigh against her face.

The wind carried the smells of hundreds of well-tended and healthy young plants laid over that of fertilizer. It was a green scent, an earthy scent, a scent of nature compressed and concentrated into the most enduring and invaluable achievement of mankind's artifice:

Agriculture.

It was, in a way, appropriate that this was the scent marking the western expanse of the Steel City Territories. The Farms were both both geographically and conceptually the twilight band between the lifeless, barren badlands and the massive symbol of technology and urbanization, Steel City. Between the two opposing worlds, each in its own way all but devoid of life, lay the swath of gradually expanding green spots, the dais upon which stood the modern Tower of Babel known as the Orbital Ladder.

What had once been called Tiphares was visible from even the most distant of the Farms. Its form was grey and indistinct with distance, but the vague, enormous disc in the far distance could already be seen where it depended from a shaft reaching upward and fading into the blue of the heavens. In Jasmine's time, it was called the Tree of Life, as it had been transformed into a plantlike structure through the incredible power of nanomachines created by the Legendary Demonic Genius, Desty Nova, two decades past.

Jasmine sat, holding the young Skoll, as the caravan truck they rode in drove across the bridge spanning the Cimarron River on whose north bank Farm 21 sat. It added some time to the trip, but it avoided crossing the northbound rail line and possibly separating the caravan if a train should come along.

The agricultural atmosphere thinned as the the track crossed to the north side of the river where the town sat, sprawled over a lake, its perimeter dotted with about a dozen windmill power generators. Most of the residential area stood on the relatively shallow lake on sturdy triple-layer wooden platforms and walkways. Jasmine smiled to herself as the truck pulled to a stop and let her and Skoll out, wished the caravan folk well, and stepped onto the lake town. With some directions from the locals, Jasmine easily found her objective within Farm 21: the clinic.

Her pulse raced as she stood at the door, silently, one hand poised. _I never really thought about what I should say, all this time, she thought. I'm right here, and I don't know what to say! "Hi, I'm the daughter of somebody you don't know, what's up?" Argh... but it'll be embarrassing to just stand here like an idiot, too..._

She hesitated a moment longer, then knocked at the clinic door and clasped her hands behind her back to keep herself from fidgeting where it could be seen. She waited quietly, glancing down to watch Skoll sitting attentive and austere at her feet, and looked up again when she heard the door unlatch and swing open on indifferently maintained hinges.

A middle-aged man stood at the door, eyes squinted behind his glasses; he was a little scruffy, but he didn't seem slobbish so much as distracted—as though he was too busy to worry about shaving. He was perhaps the tallest person Jasmine had seen without extensive cybernetics. She guessed he was at least a foot and a half taller than her, and probably more; Jasmine, herself, was easily under five feet. He had a blue mark on his forehead shaped a bit like a U.

"Oh," he said, looking down to see her. "Is there something I can do for you, Miss?" Jasmine stared silently, suddenly struck by the reality of the situation.

"Are you all right?" he asked, kindly.

"Oh! Yeah!" she blurted out hastily, snapping out of her stunned condition. "Yeah, I'm fine! Just, uh... you're Doctor Ido, right?"

"Well, yes. Do I know you?"

"Er... no, I guess you don't. I know you don't. But you... well..." Jasmine trailed off, hesitating and turning her eyes away. _How should I say it? How do I talk to a man who's like a grandfather but who doesn't even know my mother?_

Skoll nudged Jasmine's leg meaningfully, and she smiled down at her companion. _You're right, Skoll_, she thought. _I just need to let go and relax, and say what I mean._

"You... you helped my mother, a long time ago," she said, looking up to his large, gentle face and smiling wanly. "I guess you wouldn't really remember, since it's been more than twenty years, but... I just always wanted to meet you, I guess. And you should know she'll never forget you, too."

"Oh, I see... and you came here all by yourself?" asked Ido, adjusting his glasses.

"Well, yeah," she nodded.

"Hm. Well," he said cheerfully, "I guess you must be able to take care of yourself, then, huh? But I'll still offer you dinner, if you want to stay... uh... oh, I don't think I caught your name."

"Jasmine! And this's Skoll."

"Skoll, huh?" Ido said as he knelt down and reached a hand to pet the wolf pup.

Skoll bristled, growling, and Ido sweatdropped and jerked his hand away.

"Skoll!" scolded Jasmine, hands on her hips. "This's someone I've been wanting to meet for a long time, and he was a friend of my mom, so don't be so mean!"

"Uh... no, no, it's okay," laughed Ido, sheepishly. "Why don't you two come on in, and I'll get you something to eat, okay?"

Jasmine follow him inside, and they ate, and they talked. Ido told her about a train scheduled to leave for Steel City in about two weeks, and she decided she would take it.

During the remainder of her stay at Farm 21, Jasmine kept herself busy helping Ido, playing with Skoll, fishing, and sketching everything about the place—after close to a year of traveling and drawing, she had to start a second sketch book. Her sketches were like her study notes, and she learned to refer to them and paint even when her subject wasn't available. Some things, really familiar things, she could paint without even having her sketch book, and she studied the lines and shapes of Ido every moment she could.

At the end of her last day at Farm 21, as the train began to pull away, Jasmine looked back at the verdant lake village, and smiled wanly at the tall, middle-aged man seeing her off. He stood as always in a tie and lab coat, holding a painting she was sure he would never really understand: a portrait of himself next to a short, dark-haired girl, curled against his side like a child cradled by a protective father.

_There. Now you can be with him forever, mom._


	3. Stone Cold City : Vision 3 : Mean Street...

Stone Cold City  
Vision 3: Mean Streets  


The Hydro-Wall, the perimeter barrier which had both protected and contained Steel City in the days when it was known as The Scrapyard, towered six stories above Jasmine as she stood at the train station. From the Wall came a protracted, shuddering sigh like the whisper of endlessly breaking surf; it reminded her, with the aura of an ambivalent fusion of sympathy and malice, of how far she was from her home and everything she knewÑhow far she was from the place where she belonged.  
ÒItÕs no place for humans,Ó her father would say whenever it came up, especially after letters and books arrived from her Uncle Kaos. ÒThe ScrapyardÕs a place for Cybers and people whoÕre already **_dead_** on the inside,Ó he would tell her, insisting stubbornly on calling Steel City by its old, less flattering name. ÒBut itÕs no place at all for humans.Ó  
But Jasmine was of a different character; she loved Alhambra as much as anyone, but she wasnÕt content with fishing and small-town living, like her father. Since her childhood, the seeds of adventure had been sowed within her fertile imaginationÑand Alhambra, sweet and temperate as it was, could never compare to the dazzling promise of that wild, glorious crop.  
She knew, as much as she knew anything, that it was not the place where she was meant to **_live_**; just as well as she knew it was a place which she **_was_** meant to **_see_**.  
Massive structures of steel and concrete reached skyward and joined above JasmineÕs head as she walked through the behemoth gate. The space through which she passed was larger, itself, than any building she had seen before except the crumbling towers out in AlhambraÕs bay, and the gatehouse altogether was larger still. Crossing that threshold was like stepping into another worldÑthe world where the great crumbling towers belongedÑthe world of cold steel, hard concrete, and keen artifice.  
It was a world at once glorious and wretched, and it became clear in the span of an instant. Stepping within the boundaries of Steel City, Jasmine saw both the great Tower of Tiphares which Kaos had built reaching up to the base of the Tree of LifeÑthe very modern icon of human achievementÑin the same glimpse as the towering, majestic drifts of rubbish and scrap which had once given the city its name.  
Titanic mounds of trash rose ponderously all about the hard, keen outlines of the modern cityÕs rigid, inorganic profile; more than twenty years under KaosÕ supervision had begun to transform the squalor of which the city had long been both symbol and manifestation. It contrasted sharply both with the rich vitality of the Farms and with the haphazard irregularity of the great scrap heaps, both of which had been crucial sources of Steel CityÕs raw materials.  
The city proper, bounded by the great ring of rubbish separating it from the Hydro-Wall, sprawled about the Tower of TipharesÑKaosÕ own testament to the power of engineering and human potentialÑhis bridge which sought to span the void between the irreconcilable worlds of oppressive, insular utopia and subjugated urban netherworld. Outermost were the oldest buildings, many of them in sundry stages of collapse. A wave of organized renovation was working its sluggish way painstakingly through the city from its center, a ripple of ongoing urban renewal marking the boundary between the new Steel City and the crumbling remains of the ScrapyardÕs festered corpse.  
The supremely elitist society of the sky-city, however, had collapsed even before the transformation of Tiphares into the Tree of Life, and the distopian masses of the Scrapyard had rushed upward through the Tower to fill that vacuum. For nearly two decades, the cities had been joined, and Scrapyard residents even had access to the orbital city Ketheres Elyion. Jasmine had heard from her mother about that counterpart to Tiphares at the other end of the Tree of LifeÑat the end which rose upward and upward from the Tower until it disappeared into the blue of the sky, and stretched away into the blackness of space.  
Jasmine chastized herself for letting her mind wander as she was brought back to the present by a monstrous pothole over which she stumbled. She was crossing through, now, into the renovated central region of the city, but repairs to the street and sidewalk always lagged behind other construction work. All around her in the cooling red light and reaching shadows of late afternoon were the primitive embryonic forms of what would be, in time, new buildings; the quintessential Steel City building was startlingly, even jarringly symmetric in contrast to the Scrapyard-era structures all of patchwork concrete and piping. The old generation was hapazard; it had been reckless and poorly nourished, in its youth, and its age and hardships now showed clearly. By contrast, the new structures were stylized and artistic, made of clean, geometric curves and lines and angles, all of which added up to a dramatic resultant. They were the buildings designed by men dreaming of what the future could be.  
ÒThe Director General can rebuild homes and streets and offices,Ó declared a grand sign from the side of a freshly completed building some distance down the road. This pronouncement was written above an architectural schematic of the Tower of Tiphares, below which the sign continued, Òbut only **_you_** can rebuild our city!Ó  
Jasmine regarded the poster curiously as she approached, studying in passing the detail of the unfamiliar style of drawing. ÒVolunteer at the Department of Peace and Public Works today!Ó suggested the poster in print smaller than its assertion, followed by what Jasmine took to be a street addressÑshe had seen the small signs designating various streets and avenues either by name or number since crossing into the New City.  
At the next intersection, Jasmine turned right onto a wide, busy street. Sensing JasmineÕs uneasiness, Skoll padded along protectively, close at her side, as they worked through the blended crowds of humans and Cyborgs. A ways up this road, she had been told by the nuclear trainÕs conductor, was where she could find Kansas 4Ñand that bar was, in turn, where she had the best chance of finding her next objective.

  
_Plip . . . plip . . . plip . . ._  
With each slow, racking breath, the world shuddered tenuously. It hung around Jasmine in tatters, ripped asunder and stitched together again so many times she sometimes had trouble remembering just how it was supposed to be; everything was disconnected, disjointed, held together with feeble thread and artifice.  
Jasmine no longer felt her fingertips or her toes; she felt the cold, slow death in them, but they no longer felt like her body. Now they, too, were lifeless artifice. They were cunning, complicated, useless, inanimate flesh, and she knew that they had lost something vitally importantÑbut she wasnÕt sure just what that had **_been_**. The moment was what she knew, until the past and future rushed over her, predatory, savage, and consumed her, whole, in a chaotic rush of dark, vertiginous exhilaration.

  
Jasmine sat, quietly, secretly straining to contain herself.  
ÒShit,Ó cursed the Cyber, derrick-powerful alloy limbs twitching as he glared over the edges of his cards.  
ÒHey. Watch your language,Ó answered a womanÕs voice from over JasmineÕs shoulder, warningly.  
The Cyber growled and threw his cards down. ÒRrrgh... fine, okay, I **_fold_**. You can be a real pain in theÑÓ he cut off and paused briefly, although Jasmine missed the look that made him hesitate.  
ÒA real **_pain_**, Koyomi,Ó he finished, fuming. ÒYouÕll get that cute kid of yours in trouble, if you keep teaching her to piss off Cybers.Ó  
Ò**_Niece_**,Ó Koyomi corrected, quickly.  
ÒYeah. Niece,Ó echoed the Cyber, standing to a towering stature, the crown of his head nearly brushing the ceiling; its clearance was more than four meters. He looked down at Jasmine from three times her height. ÒYou be careful about what you learn from Koyomi, kid. You, and your little dog, too.Ó  
Skoll glared up at the colossal Cyber fearlessly and growled warningly, as though a cat up a tree had made threatening overtures; she was not only confident, but exceptionally cunning and very standoffish, as well. Little Skoll had been something of a runt when Jasmine found herÑbut with affection, care, and no worries of going hungry, she had grown amazingly. Now a yearling, she was quickly catching up even on the largest dogs kept in the city; she had simply been a late bloomerÑa condition which, in the wild, would have promised nothing more surely than a short life.  
Jasmine, too, had grown. Little of that growth had shown as added height; but in the months since her arrival at Steel City, in some way, everything had changed. She had seen real, complete buildings like the ruins in the Alhambra bayÑshe had also witnessed real, brutal, criminal violence for the first time, and more than a few times since. She could only imagine how the Scrapyard had been, if Steel City was a vast improvement, and everyone seemed to agree that it was.  
Living with her ÒAuntÓ KoyomiÑshe called everyone who had been friends with her mother ÒAuntÓ or ÒUncleÓÑstarting even the same day she arrived, Jasmine had met members of the mercenary police force of Hunter-Warriors. They were frequent patrons of Kansas 4, where KoyomiÕs adoptive father still spent his days and evenings. Koyomi was running it, having set aside her journalistic pursuits, and she set Jasmine to waitressing.  
ÒIf I know those two,Ó Koyomi had said in reference to JasmineÕs parents, Òthey donÕt want me turning their kid into a slacker.Ó  
Most of the Hunter-Warriors were friends of Koyomi, and a few old men had been patrons of the bar long enough to remember Koyomi as a toddler. It was weeks before Jasmine could get through a day without startling some old-timer who had been around in those days. They were the ones who remembered KoyomiÕs childhood also remembered the Madness of Zapan and that girl Ido had brought one dayÑthat girl like nothing the Scrapyard had ever seen.  
But as much as she enjoyed meeting themÑespecially the ones who remembered her motherÑthe Hunter-Warriors were by no means the people Jasmine had most wanted to see. After Koyomi, the first person out of her motherÕs stories who Jasmine had met in Steel City (thanks to KoyomiÕs vast web of connections) was the one she was most ambivalent about: Vector, Chief of the Department of Trade. When the city was still called the Scrapyard, Jasmine remembered from the stories, Vector had been a brokerÑsomeone who profited by helping the Factory, the long arm of Tiphares, capitalize upon the suffering of people living on the surface. Now in his 70s, Vector worked for Kaos, keeping watch over sharks like the one he had been in his younger daysÑunder KaosÕ careful supervision, himself.  
When the elderly Chief Vector saw Jasmine, he clutched at his chest and all but fell out of his chair, staring. Koyomi stood close behind Jasmine, leaning against the door frame and grinning her characteristic impertinence.  
Jasmine remembered from the stories on which she grew up that her mother had held Vector responsible for the death of someone important to herÑsomeone she had been willing to risk her life for. But in his old age and infirmity, he didnÕt strike Jasmine as being terribly dangerousÑhe seemed more trapped and defeated.  
Still, he was certainly less repentant than she would have liked, and his lack of shame for the life he had led troubled her. She had always believed on some level that at the end of the story, the bested villain somehow sees the error of his ways and seeks to make amends for his misguided and evil deeds. In Vector, she saw a somewhat bitter old manÑa man who was still a villainÑa villain under yoke and harness, but a villain all the same.  
_This is still no city of angels_, she had to remind herself with some regret and the bitter aftertaste of disillusionment, _and I guess I knew that; the rest of the world isnÕt like back home._

  
_Plip . . . plip . . . plip . . . plip . . ._  
Jasmine lay half-senselessly as the meaning of home fled from her into some dark recess of ebbing consciousness. Half-real images danced behind her eyes as she stared into vaguely glittering false-color darkness. She saw bright, searing light scintillating golden red. She saw a deep, shimmering blue, deeper and richer than the bottomless darkness filling her eyes, but the darkness submerged it completely like a thick, black reality-slick spilling into and spreading over and smothering a daydream.  
Beneath the murky, sooty gloom was only physical sensation, and that too was muffled, benumbed. The agonyÑhadnÕt it been an amazing, overwhelming thing, before?Ñwas now like the rush of the surf. It murmured and whispered and hushed, always present but easily missed. She was certain there had been a time before, but without clarity, and there was only a fog when she tried to imagine what it had been; the same cold fog of death that filled her limbs like a freezing breath.  
Breath!  
As the concept coalesced, as the tainted blackness roiled away from her and whole thoughts appeared again, she was striken by the impromptu recollection of her own breath, and she could almost remember why it so terrified her that each one seemed more difficult than the lastÑeach one already a struggle of which she was only vicariously aware.

  
Jasmine strained to breathe slowly and evenly, making a conscious effort to keep her body loose and fluid, and those tasks required all the attention she dared devote to them.  
Ò**_Go_**, Skoll!Ó Skoll growled reluctantly, but ducked her head in obedience and picked up the small child by his overalls, sparing only a quick glance at Jasmine before ducking with a wolfÕs agility past one of their aggressors. As much as she wanted to stay at JasmineÕs side, she understood she had to bring the human-pup to KoyomiÑto safety. Kin of Jasmine, after all, were her own by extension.  
Jasmine let out a deliberately slow breath.  
She had been returning from a walk with Skoll and the youngest of her aunt ShumiraÕs utterly astonishing string of children, still a good distance from home, when Skoll indicated that they were being followed. Jasmine had tried to lose their pursuit, but their last turn was a dead end. Little Jashugan was a born fighter, Shumira had said with glowing pride, but he had only been walking for a few months; when the Cybers cornered them, getting him out of harmÕs way was the most important thing.  
She almost regretted it. With Skoll gone, she was left alone with the steel and leather criminals, circling and jeering. She stood, resisting her own nervous tension, one hand gripping the clean white cloth of her long, narrow parcel and the other inside it.  
Ò**_FÕget_** about tha dogÕn tha squrt,Ó one of the CybersÑa towering giant with arms as big around as JasmineÕs waist and a sculpted steel face which reminded her of a bulldogÑsaid to the others, grinning and speaking with malicious humor in a voice like the thundering of heavy machinery. ÒWe **_gots_** what weÕs afta riiiight here.Ó  
Jasmine remained motionless. She imagined herself as a snake ready to strike, but could not resist wondering if she looked more like a startled deer.  
ÒYou, girlie, we **_knows_** who you is,Ó the hulk continued, apparantly unintimidated, and looming effortlessly. That was no great surprise, as he was easily twice her height and literally several times her weight. ÒAnÕ weÕs gotta **_bone_** ta pick witÕ tha **_bossman_**.Ó  
Jasmine glanced around at the murmurs and grumbles of agreement, her right handÕs grip tightening inside the white cloth. _Bossman? They must mean Uncle Kaos_, she thought. _They donÕt quite seem like disgruntled employeesÑmaybe a gang of crooks or extortionists he put out of business?_  
ÒWhatÕsa matter, **_meatbaby?_**Ó chortled another, the uniquely Scrapyard epithet deriding her complete lack of cybernetics. ÒCat gotcher tongue?Ó  
ÒHeh, looks like the liÕl Farmgirl needs ta get introduced ta thÕbig city!Ó cackled the grating voice of a Cyber with an elongated, almost serpentine body. A sinuous limb, almost more pseudopod than arm, lashed out to loop about JasmineÕs waist and thereby ensane herÑbut the limb passed unhindered through the space she had occupied, ensnaring nothing and nobody.  
Jasmine twisted in the air as the arced through the backflip; with same motion, there was a silvery grey flash upward and then across as she landed and spun into a crouch. Her aggressorÕs arms came loose near the shoulders from clean cuts where the metal had been cleft through with scarce resistance. Not a second later, with a flailing of his stubs, the CyberÕs upper body fell backward with a clatter and a cry of surprise.  
The others hesitated in surprise.  
Where their helpless quarry had stood wide-eyed and motionless with a parcel, now she crouched with an elegantly curving sword held to the side, her other hand clutching the weaponÕs linen wrap; the impossibly sharp blade, its flat glittering with whirling patterns from hilt to point, stood ready to again cut metal like straw. Her stare seemed to them more like a cagy wolf than a startled deer, and her motionlessness much more predatory than paralytic.  
ÒI donÕt want to hurt you,Ó Jasmine explained calmly, finding her confidence regrowing with action and with the feel of the now-familiar sword her uncle Kaos had made for her and trained her to use, knowing Steel City was still no safe place. She cherished it both as a gift and for its similarity to the weapon her mother had once owned; to be armed as her mother had been left Jasmine aglow with that simple and unblemished pride born of adoration.  
ÒBut I will,Ó she added, placidly and grimly, Òif I have to.Ó  
The Cybers cursed and scoffed crudely. But none advanced.  
Not until the largestÑthe one who had spoken first, who she thought of as BulldogÑsnorted gruffly in disgust and roughly shoved one of the others at her. Ò**_Get_**Õer, willya! **_All_**Õa ya move!Ó  
As the first hapless villain staggered toward her, Jasmine shoved worry away and took refuge in the oldest things she had learnedÑthe things she had learned from her mother, and trained into her arms and her legs. She was twisting in the air even as the Cyber half-stooped to reach for where she had crouched, the long stripe of linen which had been wrapped about her sword whipping behind her like a banner; on the downbeat, she kicked sharply off the face of her first attacker, spun again, and slashed neatly across the eyes of the second, blinded by her cloth draped past his face and more permanently by the damascene scimitar.  
She spun, still, as she landed, twirling with her momentum as leaves dance on the windÑthe principle characteristic of the art she learned from her mother. To oppose momentum directly wastes energy meant for the opponent; motion must be like the swift river flowing effortlessly, and the strike must be like the rock which splits the stream. That, she learned from her mother, was the principle of motion in Panzer Kunst.  
The sword, however, she had learned from her Uncle Kaos, and he had shown her the way to make her blade cut cleanly as a rudder cuts the water. So it did as she spun on herself and the gracefully curving patterned steel arced upward, slicing into metalÑdeep enough to rend artificial lung with a sharp whistling hiss of leaking air. Where the strength of her body was limited, she was supported by the speed and keenness of her blade. It was enough, for her third aggressorÑthe one Bulldog had physically encouragedÑstaggered away, forgetting her in his breathlessness.  
_It wonÕt kill him_, she told herself, _but he wonÕt be fighting, either._  
The weapon, her uncle had taught her, was to be wielded as though a part of her: a long, deadly fingerÑa potent extension of her will. JasmineÕs will flashed in the alleyÕs half-light, its motion hidden by the garish flutter and swirl of white linnen; resistance as she wheeled and danced, and another steel limb crashed to the ground, another Goliath toppled.  
On her tongue, she could taste victory with a spice of wildness, a feral yet ironically pure flavoring. Was this what her mother had found in battle? Was it this euphoric sense of sincerity, of certainty, of her place in the cosmos?  
_When I see her again_, Jasmine knew in her marrow, _when I see my mother again, IÕll be a warrior like herÑa warrior to make her proud!_  
Without sight or sound, she felt the danger behind her and wheeled about, blade cleaving the airÑbut it cleaved nothing else, for a hand easily the size of her head grasped her by the forearm and squeezed until she yelped and dropped her weapon with a clatter.  
ÒThatÕs enough, meatbaby,Ó growled Bulldog wrathfully, still clutching her arm painfully and plainly amused by her struggles. ÒYouÕs real trouble, girlieÑyou **_and_** tha bossman. But weÕs gonna learn **_him_**. Him and you **_both!_** Gwahahahah!Ó  
Jasmine glared up at Bulldog through rage, fear, and welling tears, her mind churning for an escape or attack. There were things she might still doÑthings her mother had been reluctant to let her know about, for they were dangerous to use with a fragile human body. Even so, her father was able to, so if she could just reach his headÑ  
The thought was pierced and sundered by the wholly unurban sound of a wolfÕs howl. Even BulldogÕs laughter faltered and his grip weakened, for that sound strikes always true to the heart even of a man of steel, whether it seems moving or terrifying.  
Bulldog half-turned in a jerky motion of surprise, and Jasmine could see around him, at least a little.  
ÒSkoll!Ó she cried in surprise, and not a little relief.  
ÒYou have skill, bravery, andÑif I may say so myselfÑa fine sword, Jasmine,Ó said the familiar voice of her uncle, Director General Kaos. As she leaned, she could see him, and the half-dozen Hunter-Warriors who flanked him, as well. Bulldog froze at the sight of several firearms trained on him, and slowly loosened his grip completely. Wasting no time, the Hunter-Warriors drew forward to lead him and his crew away with a fair share of jostling.  
ÒBut that was still reckless,Ó Kaos added once they were aloneÑhe standing, and she kneeling to hug and pet Skoll, who had delivered the child and then led the figurative cavalry to her. Jasmine glanced up at him with the reluctance born of knowing oneÕs accused, however merciful, to be right. He knelt, retrieving the sword he had made for his dear friendÕs daughter who was busy stroking her longtime companionÕs grey pelt, but kept his hands quite to himselfÑhe had learned better already than to try and touch the yearling wolf. That, he knew, was a familiarity allowed only to Jasmine.  
ÒYou donÕt have a CyberÕs strength or speed,Ó Kaos continued in a gentle yet castigatory tone, Ònot to mention armor plating. And knowing how to fight does not make you a warrior.Ó  
He smiled with a gentleness surprising beside the power she knew was within him, and touched her cheek consolingly as her eyes turned downward; she had forgotten his PsychometryÑthat by simply touching her sword, he had seen as though through her that which she had done and said and thought.  
ÒShh, now, donÕt look so wounded. I know what you aspire to; but I know, also, that your mother would never wish for you to know the coldness which a warrior learns. Make yourself not a warrior, Jasmine, not unless you **_must_**.  
ÒI know your mother well, sweet child: to make Alita proud, you need only be her daughter.Ó 


End file.
